


Clone Roses

by fandumbandflummery



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Memorials, Umbara is a Spooky Place, battlefield tourism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 18:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10747830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandumbandflummery/pseuds/fandumbandflummery
Summary: Finn contemplates those who came before him at a field on Umbara.





	Clone Roses

Umbara’s titularly a neutral world, but the current government is sympathetic enough to the fight against the First Order's increasing belligerence that even if they won’t commit troops, they’ll at least let a tired squadron of X-wings, a company of ground troops, and a Jedi-to-be rest and refuel for a couple rotations.

The constant night doesn’t bother Finn nearly as much as the others - the nights on Starkiller were long, and the depths of the vast machine were always dark. He feels restless, so he tells his superiors that he’s going for a walk, hoping that some light marching will tire him out - something about this planet unsettles the soldier in him.

Unsettling is the best way to describe Umbara - but he has to admit, still strangely beautiful. The reddish clouds that swath the planet are occasionally broken up by a clear black sky, studded with stars and streaks of colour from surrounding nebulae. The vegetation is thick and almost unbroken, save for the occasional clearing made by a craggy black hill, or a town glowing blue and green amid the lush, overbearing trees whose bioluminescing portions intermittently light his path with their soft red and purple light.

Green flashes stir in his peripheral vision - the eyes of a pair of Banshee flittering through the low canopy. It jolts Finn out of his reverie and he reaches for his rifle, before he remembers that Banshee are scavengers, and won’t attack anything that looks like it’ll put up much of a fight.

Lowering his weapon, Finn looks down, and realizes he’s now standing among a veritable carpet of knee-high flowers, stems thick with leaves and blooms with red petals nearly the size of his palms.

Dimly, he recalls seeing such great patches of luminescent red during their landing. Pava had been sitting next to him in the lander, her right arm bandaged tightly and one leg in a brace, and had filled him in on what they were.

“There was a big battle here during the Clone Wars - well really, there were many - but those flowers don’t really root in the places where Umbarans were shot,” she’d said, “Something in their blood wasn’t so good to them as human blood was. It was better for them…some people call ‘em Mando Poppies, or Clone Roses.”

Finn look up and around at his surroundings, and finds he’s standing in a sort of dell in the surrounding flatland, with those thick tentacle-branched trees that pulsate violet and blue. The red flowers at his feet seem to stretch on forever, a dimly glowing carpet, before vanishing into the mists. Small bumps like white stones break up the carpet every so many paces, but Finn knows they must be pieces of armor - greaves, cuirasses, shoulder guards. He brushes aside a particularly thick growth, and finds a helmet, nearly a half-century old, bleached mostly white but with traces of blue paint, and nearby another with flecks of gold. Strangely, as far as he can see, there’s not a single bit of Umbaran tech or armory to be found. Only the white armor of clones, and the gently waving sea of blooms.

Human blood was better for them. 

"For them to grow so thick - must’ve been a massacre," he says out loud, to no-one in particular. So many lives, already too short and cut even shorter.

Finn’s not sure what compels him to do it, but something about this place seems…sacred, or at least demanding of some kind of deeds of respect. He contemplates leaving something behind for the thousands who must die just beneath his feet, his progenitors in spirit and custom. But instead Finn gathers a few blooms with the cloying black earth still thick about their roots, and tucks them carefully along with a few seed heads into his belt pouch before turning back in the direction of the base.

He makes a mental note to ask Rey if he can borrow one of her small flowerpots for them.


End file.
